Local News

Guilty Pleas In Campaign Contribution Scheme From 2012 Candidate And Her Husband

HARTFORD (CBS Connecticut) — Federal prosecutors say a candidate for the 5th District Congressional seat in the 2012 election and her husband have pleaded guilty before a federal judge to taking part in an illegal campaign contribution conspiracy.

Lisa Wilson-Foley had sought the Republican nomination in the election, and acknowledged in the plea that she hired a co-conspirator, identified as a former elected official, as a campaign consultant, but that she and her husband, businessman Brian Foley, arranged for the consultant to be paid through Brian Foley’s nursing home business, and to claim the work was being done on a volunteer basis, to get around restrictions on contributions to candidates. The co-conspirator is not named in the court paperwork, but is widely reported to be former Governor and WTIC Afternoon Show host John Rowland.

Any one individual can give a total of $7,500 to any one candidate over the course of a campaign, but in this case, “Co-conspirator 1″ received about $35,000 for campaign services — money that was not reported to the Federal Elections Commission. The investigation is continuing, conducted by the U.S. Postal Investigation Service.

Besides the Foleys and “Co-conspirator 1,” three unindicted co-conspirators are listed in the federal court paperwork — a political consultant, and an attorney and an executive for the nursing homes.

Sentencing for the Foleys is scheduled for June 23 in Bridgeport. They could be fined up to $100,000 and sentenced to a maximum prison term of one year.